Before Idris Elba hit it big as Stringer Bell in HBO’s critically acclaimed if low-rated series "The Wire," he lived with his then-wife in Jersey City … before he moved out and into a van, Elba tells Us Weekly.

Elba, who stars as a police detective in BBC show Luther, tells Us he had been hopping between the states and London when his short-lived marriage fell apart.

"The apartment we had lived in together was in Jersey City," he tells Us. "So when I left, I was sofa-hopping here and there and got to a place where I was parking it in Jersey somewhere and just camping down for the night."